


Bend With Time

by psalmoflife



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Origin Story, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:17:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalmoflife/pseuds/psalmoflife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melinda joins SHIELD for lack of a better option.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bend With Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NYCScribbler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NYCScribbler/gifts).



> Written for NYCScribbler, who wanted Melinda being awesome. Happy Yuletide!
> 
> This is currently canon compliant, though I'm sure it will be Jossed at some point.

Melinda joins SHIELD for lack of a better option.

Well, that’s not entirely true. She’s at the end of her service contract with the Army and debating what she wants to do next. She’s given brief thought to re-upping, but knows that her frustration at following orders from idiotic officers isn’t going to get any better, and she’s far past her breaking point when it comes to passing those orders to the soldiers beneath her. 

She’s spending a lot of time researching her options, thinks about taking the Foreign Service Officer Test or trying to qualify into the FBI - hell, at this point joining the local police department would probably do wonders for her blood pressure - and then a non-descript guy in a suit shows up while she’s supervising physical fitness tests and asks to speak to her alone.

The guy is from an organization she’s never heard of, with a name that’s entirely too long for her to remember. “Just call us SHIELD,” he says, pressing his business card into her hand. 

She has no idea what kind of organization SHIELD is, but they’re offering her a job. 

When she asks the guy, he says, “We’re like the CIA, but with a broader scope,” which makes no fucking sense because the CIA is an international intelligence agency with a covert operations arm that is a little too trigger-happy, in Melinda’s opinion, and she has no idea how an agency could possibly have a broader scope (especially an agency that she’s never heard of). 

He seems to be reading her mind, because he raises an eyebrow and mentions that they tend to butt heads with the CIA pretty frequently, and Melinda thinks of all the station chiefs that have pissed her off over the years and decides to give SHIELD a chance. 

\---

Melinda May Wong is born to first-generation immigrants in a medium-sized hospital with an abundance of over-eager interns and a shortage of supply closets. When she asks about her birth (much later in life, of course), all most of her family can remember is the interns sprinting back and forth to fetch the requested supplies. 

Melinda is the fourth of five children and the only girl. Her family is fairly progressive, but she still tends to get lost in the shuffle, particularly when it comes to her parents’ aspirations for her. Oh, they want her to be happy, but they don’t expect her to excel academically in the same way they do her brothers. 

But Melinda _does_ excel, inspired by her brothers’ various passions and her desire not to be known as “the stupid Wong kid.” She also has more freedom to do things like play sports and read books for fun, and while she never quite matches her brothers’ GPAs or SAT scores, she’s the most well-rounded of the five of them and has, by far, the fastest time for running a mile.

When she starts thinking about college - and more importantly, how she’s going to pay for college, and what the hell she plans to do afterwards - one of the guidance counselors suggests the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. Melinda doesn't think any of the women in her family have ever been in a military (although she _knows_ that none of them have ever gone to college, so she’s trailblazing no matter what), and she’s pretty sure that her family won’t be thrilled with her choice, but getting a free education in exchange for a commission at the end seems like an okay deal. 

\---

If she’s honest, college is sort of boring.

She likes her classes well enough, courses in political theory and international relations, and after a couple of years her Russian is good enough to debate with her professor, which is kind of cool. The handful of general education requirements she has to meet are sort of annoying, but she manages to power through them in her first two years without tanking her GPA. 

Her freshman year roommate is nice enough, and is in fact so unobtrusive that they continue to live together all four years, even when they move out of the dorms and into an apartment. (Later, when they hug at graduation, Melinda realizes that she knows next to nothing about the girl, doesn't even know what her major is, but considering all the roommate drama her squadmates seemed to have she thinks maybe respectful distance is the best kind of roommate relationship to have.) 

Most of her free time is tied up in ROTC commitments, in the training regimen and in learning military protocol. She doesn't especially like the rest of the officer candidates, isn't best friends with any of them, but they all work together well enough. It starts chafing at her, though, when it becomes clear that she will be among the top of their class, if not the very top, but will have a narrower role as an officer because she isn’t allowed a combat position. 

As for relationships… well, she goes to the occasional party, enjoys hanging out at the local bar, but her natural standoffishness with people doesn't really translate well to meeting strangers. She has a couple of short relationships with guys from her classes, and a drunken encounter with a friend of a friend that has her wondering if she might be bi, before she squishes that thought down. Melinda has no problem with exploring her sexuality, but she knows that the rest of the world might, and she doesn't intend to torpedo her career before it has a chance to begin. 

Her family shows up for graduation and commissioning, proud even if they still don’t really understand her choice, and she discovers that she is actually glad to show them around campus. She has her BA now, and her commission, and is fluent in three languages, and when she hears _Melinda May Wong, Summa Cum Laude_ called over the loudspeaker she can hear her family’s cheers over the crowd. 

\---

The Army is… mostly frustrating. 

She excels at her job, in distilling reports and rapid translation, and in setting a good example for the other troops. But she’s only six months past graduation and it’s already clear that her opportunities for advancement in the Army are limited, that the general attitude toward women combined with the rules about excluding women from combat positions have her stuck. 

The lack of active conflicts means that the Army is spending a lot of time thinking about the Soviet threat, trying to predict their next move and figure out how to counter. There’s a lot of relying on intelligence from CIA officers that she never meets, intelligence that she has no way to personally verify or even have corroborated, and she butts heads with the CIA crew more than once when her analysis of a situation differs from theirs. 

Despite all the hours she’s putting in at work, and her masterful knowledge of the work her unit is doing, she feels like she’s on the outside looking in. She knows that the CIA is really making the calls, and that they can (and probably do) disregard everything she has to say. Even if the Army were more involved, or had a combat role, she would still be working a desk. She’s good at it, but she feels replaceable, like if she were to just walk out of the office they could have someone else take over her duties just as effectively within the hour. 

It simultaneously makes her want to slack off because no one will notice, and work harder in case someone _does_ notice and it turns into her ticket out. 

\---

Someone notices.

She never actually learns the name of the SHIELD officer that brings her in. She finds out later, after she’s worked her way up to Level Five, that he specializes in recruitment, traveling the world to meet the best and brightest of the military and intelligence agencies and hand-picking the people he thinks best-suited for SHIELD. After he completes the preliminary transfer paperwork for Melinda she never sees him again. 

(Sometimes that nags at her, that somewhere in the world there’s a man who changed her life so dramatically, who saw her languishing away in the Army and gave her a way to make a difference, and she can’t say thank you. She usually tries to push those thoughts down, but she can only spare so many brain cells to pushing thoughts down, and she’d rather think about the mystery recruiter than… other things.) 

Melinda breezes through the SHIELD academy training, her military experience and natural ability to pick new things up quickly giving her an advantage over most of her fellow agents. The one person who seems able to keep up with her- well, he rubs her the wrong way. He’s not a bad guy, but he’s friendly and inquisitive, and she can’t tell if he’s getting to know their new member class out of a genuine desire to make friends, or feigning friendship in order to know their weaknesses. 

Of course she gets paired with him on their first assignment. 

“I’m Phil,” he says, offering his hand to her. “Phil Clarkson. It’s nice to meet you.” 

Melinda represses a sigh before putting her hand in his. “Melinda Wong. Nice to meet you too.” 

\---

Being partnered with Phil sucks a lot less than she thought it would. 

Oh, he drives her crazy 98% of the time, with his corny jokes and inherent belief in the good in people (she blames that on the Captain America Thing). 

Their analytic skills complement each other, Phil often seeing the big picture while Melinda focuses in on the minute details. They fall into the habit of sparring every morning, each of them learning enough new tricks in their agency-mandated training sessions that they avoid getting stuck in a permanent stalemate. Phil is more of a people-person, makes friends with ease, and Melinda finds herself sliding into his social circle, to regular lunches in the canteen and poker nights at Jasper’s place. 

She doesn't realize that she trusts him with her life until the mission where she gets pinned down, stuck hiding behind a concrete barricade with dwindling ammunition and a head wound. She knows that the rest of the team has her location, and is surprised when she _isn't’_ surprised to see him vaulting over the barricade to join her, handing her fresh ammo so they can shoot their way out. 

They extract themselves so quickly that the rest of the team doesn't even have time to help, each shooting over the other’s shoulder and automatically checking their blind spots. 

They walk out with a report that reads “all primary and secondary objectives completed” and a recommendation for commendation for each of them. 

They get the commendation, and an offer for a promotion to level five. 

Melinda doesn't know that many level five agents. Most of the agents she works with are threes or fours, working missions that are important but not world-threatening, time-sensitive but not with a 48 hour deadline. Level five is supposedly a comparable workload to level four, but gives access to the high-priority missions, the ones that tend to be classified “eyes only” and can involve briefing someone at the White House. Level five is the stepping stone to an important role at SHIELD.

Phil and Melinda say yes.

The paperwork involved in becoming a level five is extensive. It’s the level at which there is considered to be risk to their families, so they both undergo a name change. Phil Clarkson becomes Phil Coulson, and Melinda drops her last name and becomes Melinda May. They give SHIELD even more discretion over their medical decisions, post-death arrangements, and accept greater surveillance of their off-work hours. 

It’s not exactly what Melinda had envisioned doing when she agreed to join SHIELD, but she thinks it will be worth it. 

\---

Three weeks after becoming a level five Melinda saves the world.

It’s not much of an exaggeration. A terrorist organization has somehow stolen a nuclear weapon, an older one from the Cold War era that must have gotten lost in the shuffle of the other former Soviet republics sending their arsenals back to Russia. It’s been smuggled into the US, and the terrorists think (probably correctly) that the detonation will cause President Clinton to declare a nuclear strike in response. 

Melinda and Phil are on the team that is sent to diffuse the situation, and by chance are the first pair to stumble across the weapon itself. Because Melinda has steadier hands, she dismantles the trigger device, the scientists back at base giving her instructions while Phil watches the door. 

On the plane back to headquarters Phil turns to her and says, “Holy shit, we just stopped a nuclear apocalypse.” 

\---

The hardest thing about the job is not being able to talk about the job. 

She doesn't make it home much, never gets approved for leave longer than three days, which hardly seems worth making the trip to her parents’ house. It’s hard to make friends outside of work when you’re paranoid that everyone you meet is an enemy agent trying to use you to infiltrate SHIELD (and it happens just often enough that everyone level five and up has stopped trying to date outside the agency). 

But she really feels like she’s doing good work, helping people, and that makes it all worthwhile. 

\---

Years down the road, after she has become The Cavalry and then gone back to a desk job, Phil asks her to go back into the field.

If it were anyone else asking she would probably have said no. But Phil is her partner, and it had been bad enough losing him once. She doesn't intend to lose him again. 

And if his Captain America thing seems even weirder now that she’s met Steve Rogers, and if she’s ready to blacken his eye over the Skye situation, well… there are worse teams she could be with.


End file.
